Mentor me

Thursday

Oct 30, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 30, 2008 at 6:00 PM

By LINDSEY HOWALD of the Tribune's staff

?It's hard,? 10-year-old Zaquiel Houston said from the back seat of mentor Justin Riffle's SUV. He was talking about being a big brother to his three siblings. The two were trying to beat the sunset to Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, hoping for at least another hour to light a pathway through the woods for them to tromp through. ?It's super hard,? he continued. ?Because I gotta do the dishes and keep track of them. It's fun to help my mom.? He paused for a moment, experiencing a youngster's typical swift change of heart. ?Actually, being a big brother has its moments. Like sometimes you get to boss them around, you get more stuff, and you have more opportunities, like sometimes I get to go with my friends' houses and go with Justin – he's the cool man around here.?

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Riffle laughed from the driver's seat. He also gets to experience the challenges and benefits of being a big brother – he has mentored the outgoing 10-year-old for a year and a half as a part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Missouri Amachi program, which pairs mentors with children of incarcerated parents. Laughter is the 23-year-old physics teacher's frequent response to Zaquiel, who he calls a ?character,? a kid who spent the past hour moon-walking in a Dracula cape while shopping for Halloween costumes.

?He's a great big brother to his little brothers,? Riffle said earlier, when Z, as he has nicknamed Zaquiel, was out of earshot. Since they joined the program together – a rare instance in a program that typically pairs a mentor with a child he has never met – the pair take a couple of hours every week to romp outdoors, eat, talk or play video games.

Z will occasionally ask Justin whether one of his brothers, who don't have ?Big Brothers? and whose father is currently in a federal penitentiary in Kansas, can come along to hang out.

Z, who's called 'Quiel at home – his two younger brothers also have names beginning with Z – can recall the first time he met Justin, ?just like it was yesterday ? We met at school where I went for the third grade. He was a playing ground supervisor,? he said, and cut off.

He leaned forward. ?OK, get this. A lot of girls liked him, I'm not joking. They told me and I'm like, 'Oh, so there's a new guy at school, huh?' I go to the playground, there's this giant dude – I thought it was a kid! And I said, 'What's up, man?' He said, 'What's up.' ?

Countless games of basketball later, the two have formed a close bond.

Being a Big Brother

?I had a tendency to gravitate towards the kids with the larger personalities out there,? Riffle said recently after school hours, sitting at a desk in his West Junior High School classroom as students decorated the hallway for that evening's all-school party.

When he met Z, Riffle was still studying at the University of Missouri to complete a double major in education and physics for May 2008, supervising Shepard Elementary School's lunchroom and playground a few days a week around classes.

?He kept me out of trouble,? Z, now a fifth-grader at Derby Ridge Elementary, said. ?I got into a lot of trouble when I was a kid – I'm a grown-up now.?

Z, who has a smoothly-buzzed head Riffle will often scrub playfully, is constantly joking.

He has a flair for goofy dramatics, at times posturing but other times speaking more seriously about his brothers, school, interests and Justin.

?It had crossed my mind that it would be cool to be a Big Brother ? though I'd never been a part of the program before,? Riffle said. The St. Louis native is currently pursuing a master's degree through the MU Teaching Fellowship program and tries to get in a couple hours of fun with Z every week despite a full-time teaching schedule and night classes.

?I got a whole bunch out of it, just hanging out on the playground with him, asking how school was going, seeing how things were. The ironic thing is I had that thought and never really did anything about it, and one day Z came up and asked me if I would be his big brother in the program. So I jumped on it.?

If common personality and interests are the telltale signs a match between a ?Big? and ?Little? will work – which, according to BBBS, is actually crucial – Justin and Z were made for each other. Riffle share's Z's love for video games and the outdoors and also exhibits that curious blend of seriousness and jokes.

After spending his younger years in and out of various forms of trouble, which he carefully describes as a period that involved ?spending some quality time with principals,? Riffle joined student council as a high school sophomore and was challenged by caring friends and teachers.

His passion for teaching, a profession he has since been positive he would pursue, came from a hope ?to come back and do it on the other side for some other people.?